


Prologue: Worlds and Ways

by Sharinarra



Series: The Life and Times of Rhi Potter-Black [1]
Category: Harry Potter - J. K. Rowling
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Gender Changes, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-25
Updated: 2018-02-25
Packaged: 2019-03-23 21:12:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,010
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13796463
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sharinarra/pseuds/Sharinarra
Summary: Unbeta'd, somewhat (very) complicated.Warning: contains allusions and references to things that some may find disturbing. I am trying to be a general as possible with them, but it is an integral part of the character. There is no sexual content.This is the introduction of the metaphysic and main character of what is intended to be a series following the life of a woman's soul reborn in a different universe into the body of Harry Potter, a character from a book series that she absolutely loved as a growing teen.





	Prologue: Worlds and Ways

**Author's Note:**

> This is complicated. So very complicated. I don't even know what my brain is on sometimes.
> 
> There are a lot of other stories vaguely hinted at in this intro prologue - I can pretty much guarantee that I won't be going into detail on those. It's very, very vaguely possible that they'll get mentioned and briefly explained at some point, but in general they're just there as a bit of background.
> 
> Honestly, this spawned from a long series of daydreams that started when I was an early teen, and the vast majority of characters and adventures have long been forgotten, so trying to write them would be an exercise in utter futility.

Imagine.

A world like yours, mundane and normal.  
A world next door, almost exactly the same. With one tiny difference: in that world, you lived.

That was the difference for the girl who became the Boy-Who-Lived. In the world of her birth, she died by her own hand in her twenty seventh year. Meanwhile, in a different universe, in a different world, separated by space and time and the empty nothingness of the veil between, a boy fated by the already thickly weaving threads of destiny to Live… died.  
Still-born before ever he drew his first breath.

But Destiny’s web was not so easily circumvented.  
And Magic propelled by Destiny is a power beyond the comprehension of mortal minds.

One soul falls into the void.  
One passes on before it is ever born.

Magic reaches out.

And Lilian Jameson opened blurry eyes to a wall of noise and light that she had strenuous objections to ever having encountered again. Her last memory of fading into a blissful and blessed oblivion contrasted sharply with this loud and harsh new world. Unbidden, her distress and confusion communicated themselves to the body she now inhabited, and Lily Evans - all unknowing of the traumatised soul inside - began to rock and comfort her newborn baby son, while his father and god-father looked on with alternating expressions of doting love and panicked realisation that this tiny, fragile - very loud - being was now in their care.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

At this juncture, it behooves us to take a step back, and contemplate the nature of the universes and worlds that make up that unknowable vastness most frequently called the Multiverse by those with some awareness of it.

In its simplest - and therefore most untrue - form, the explanation goes as follows: for every choice, every chance, every moment where this could happen instead of that, there is a world where it has. As a consequence, there are an uncountable multitude of worlds and universes just for one single original iteration and all of its possible changes and pathways. 

But that is just the beginning. The empty void that is called the Veil connects more than just that single cluster to each other. It also connects every other universe and their clusters, each to themselves and to each other. The threads of void stuff that form the Veils weave can - if one has the power and preferably the knowledge - be used to travel between the worlds and universes. And where there is a large enough tear in the Veil to allow a physical being to pass through, there are many, many more tiny pinpricks that allow the passage of thoughts, ideas, and stories. For every tale you have ever read, for every legend, myth, novel, play, or film, there is a corresponding original iteration world. Each with its own cluster of diversions from the known progression of events. 

There are also - as the rules of chaos and variety demand - certain people born to a great many worlds who have an innate ability to interact with the Veil. To travel and to see.  
They are rare, vanishingly so, when put against the number of people who cannot so much as sense the widest of rifts in the Veil without help. But when the number of worlds and iterations of them begin to be contemplated, it becomes almost impossible to ignore just how many of them there truly are. 

One set of very specific genetics in particular has developed an almost disturbing habit of cropping up again and again. To the point where once the first iteration of this woman had discovered her ability, and begun to encounter others of herself, there quickly began to sprout within their cluster a Family. Immortal. Powerful. Living in a side dimension within the void, constantly travelling, and finding new selves as they awakened to bring into the fold. At its height, the Family encompassed iterations of the same soul from over thirty different worlds, many with one or more partners and children. Some even with grandchildren.  
Each iteration, it was discovered early on, possessed an extra gift beyond just the inherent ability to slip between worlds, and each gift was as individual and different as the origins of the women themselves were similar. These different gifts and the subsequent specialisations of their wielders as they settled into their new family gave rise to new names for each of them: Damia, who was the second found and developed the skills and powers of a stereotypically imagined Demon Lord; Zodiac, whose powers and personality were split into those of the twelve animals of the chinese zodiac and their associated mystical traits; Kethisha the Kestrel Goddess; Cat, who became for a time Angelica, the Angel of Death, before reincarnating on Middle Earth as Durin the Dwarf Lord, reborn. Each a long and convoluted epic tale in their own right.

But a Power such as they could not live forever, and in time another Power rose, one that professed to fill the space of the God worshipped by so many people in their cluster and many related other clusters.  
In seeking to neutralise the Power of the Family, the one calling themself Jehova cast them into the roles of Lucifer and his demons, named their home realm Hell, and sought to cast them out and down. Years uncounted later - for it is hard to count years when you live outside of time and every world runs at a different speed to the others - the Great Apocalypse finally came to be, and 90% of the main Family were eradicated. But there were survivors. 

The Family rose once more, this time split into three lines. Those who took up the mantle of the original line rebuilt Hell, and renamed it Lux, taking the name of light and rebirth upon themselves.  
The Lux bloodline became the main line, and resided in the rebuilt home realm.  
The second line came of those whose residence was in a different realm to Lux, and who had all come into being relatively close together, linked by more direct ties of blood than simply being what had come to be called facets of the same soul. They had been a distant relation to the original Family, but stayed neutral and apart in the war. Their origins and forms were closely tied to nations and land, and many who joined them held powers in line with the gods of Ancient Egypt, and so their line became the Psedjet line.  
The third line came into being with the rise and spectacular expansion of the facet who came to be known as Analicia Kade. A humble human child who was used as a pawn in a lethal game of hunters, demons, and monsters, she came out of her trials a Power in her own right. Arch-angel, Primal Monster, and walking a perpetual tight-rope to prevent herself falling into the omniscient divinity that would destroy the person she tried so hard to remain. She set up a hidden city and realm of her own, in an unclaimed and swiftly unfindable portion of land in her birth world. She offered haven and lose coalition to all facets who sought not to be bound by the tighter strictures and structure of the other lines. 

With the discovery of each new facet, the offer upon their awakening into their powers was made. A Name was taken, and a Line was chosen. 

But the Multiverse is vast. And no being, no matter how powerful, can truly expect to find every iteration of themselves who meet the criteria of Awakening. 

One such undiscovered Facet was the girl named Lilian Jameson. But her Awakening did not come until after she fell into the void. 

Nor was her first contact with another facet of her soul linked to any of the three Bloodlines. She encountered another two facets entirely.

 

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

In a world where the Ages of Man and God ran in cycles, as the Age of Steel began to fade, a Great Tournament was thrown by the agreement of all the Gods. Once per year, for a full turn of the twelve star forms, the gates to a land outside of the nations of man were thrown open, and the chosen of the nations went through; to explore the magic and mystery of the world; to commune directly with the Gods and carry out their wishes; to plan, lead, and fight in the great Arena to decide upon the ownership of territories for the coming year.  
And as the final years of the Tournament came to a close, the battles of might and magic became the method by which the very fate of the world and the form of the new Age would be decided.  
At the same time, several of those Gods who had lived the longest sought at last to find and raise up a chosen mortal to take their mantle and place in the Heavens. One such mortal was the woman who became Ptah, god of building and the esoteric structures of the world. But she was born with more than simply mortal gifts, and so the newly risen Ptah Awoke to her innate talents, and became a mistress of the Veils weave, seeing in dimensions beyond the scope even of most Gods, and bending time and space to her whim.

Some time later, in a different world attached to a relatively closely tied cluster, another facet of that soul Awoke to her Powers as a Lady of the Dreamscape, unintentionally calling the attention of Ptah, who travelled across the weaves of the Veil to meet with this newly risen aspect of herself. The new Dreamlady greeted Ptah with thinly veiled relief, overjoyed to find another like herself, and in desperate need of aid in learning to control her abilities. Together, they formed a partnership, and Ptah invested some small fragment of her own self into the Dreamer, who from there on took the name of NeferKaPtah, though usually going by Ka for short. 

When Lilian Jameson fell from the bridge, she did not die immediately. Instead, she found herself locked into a coma, and partially Awakened just enough to be fully aware of everything around her - often even hovering outside of her body. Trapped in a body she could not escape, screaming out for the release she had sought to find and was instead denied, her call echoed across the Veil, to be heard by Ka.

Searching out the source of the heart rending despair, Ka travelled in her Dreamstate across the Veil, following the call, and came at last to the mindscape of Lilian. Upon hearing her tale, Ka offered the suffering young facet of her soul a choice: to be forcibly removed from the tether holding her spirit back, and thence to take her chances with whatever afterlife her world followed, or to be brought into the Veil, held tight in Ka’s arms, and released to the waiting entropy of oblivion, slowly and painlessly dissolved away into nothingness by the creeping advance of the voidstuff.

It is no wonder, then, that waking to a painful rushing vortex of golden light that forced her into a small, unbreathing body, was not received at all well by the girl who had wanted only to be nothing.

And thus does our story begin, with the soul of a dimensionally challenged woman who wanted nothing more than the welcoming embrace of oblivion having instead been forcibly reborn into the body of a boy fated to pay a starring role in the future of his people.

One thing is for sure: this will not be the story that she devoured as a teen in her favourite book series. 

 

Terminology

Multiverse - the collective term for all of the worlds and universes in existence.  
Veil - the somewhat porous barrier that keeps the worlds separate from each other  
Cluster - the term for all of the worlds that are spawned by changes to the ‘original’ timeline of that universe.  
Voidstuff - the substance (or lack thereof) that forms the woven ‘threads’ of the Veil


End file.
